Continental (vs.) Analytical Philosophy

Resumen El propósito de este artículo es mostrar el modo en que Borges, en su relato Tigres azules, desarrolla varias ideas interesantes en torno a la lógica, el lenguaje y las matemáticas. El punto de partida es el escepti-cismo borgeano sobre la capacidad de la lógica clásica para abordar el problema de la verdad y los mundos imposibles. Se defiende que ob-jetos inconsistentes e, incluso, autocontradictorios no necesariamente dan lugar a mundos física o lógicamente imposibles. Se sugiere que las paradojas que Borges construye en el cuento no son paradojas de autorreferencia, sino variantes de la paradoja de Moore y de las para-dojas de implicación material, por lo que para superarlas se requiere un enfoque no-clásico que neutralice ECQ, esto es, un sistema de lógica paraconsistente. Abstract Tigres azules of J. L. Borges. Logic, Truth and Impossible Worlds. The aim of this text is show how Borges, in his story Tigres azules, develops several interesting ideas about logic, language and mathematics. The starting point is Borgesian skepticism about the ability of classical logic to take the problem of truth and impossible worlds. It is defended that inconsistent and even self-contradictory objects do not necessarily give rise to physically or logically impossible worlds. It is suggested that the paradoxes that Borges constructs in the story

In this essay I argue that the notion of the infinite plays a critical role at key points in Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari's arguments, and that it does so throughout Deleuze's philosophical career. To clarify how this notion develops in Deleuze's work, I compare Deleuze's understanding of the infinite with recent work in infinitism. This will help set the stage for clarifying Deleuze's metaphysics of problems which shows both how the infinite can be affirmed while avoiding both skepticism and the need for foundationalism of its various varieties.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

I argue that Theodor W. Adorno is best understood as a moral perfectionist thinker in the stripe of Stanley Cavell. This is significant because Adorno’s moral philosophy has not received serious interest from moral philosophers, and much of this has to do with difficulties in situating his thought. I argue that once Adorno is situated in this way, then, like Cavell, he offers an interesting moral perspective that will be of value to a variety of moral theorists. My argument proceeds in two broad steps: first, I show that Cavell and Adorno share a distinct epistemological orientation, one that centers around the impossibility of knowledge in certain situations, and trades on a Kantian and post-Kantian picture. Second, I show that their moral perfectionism fundamentally rests on such epistemology.

Le genre littéraire « science-fiction » (ou « SF »), qui semble stimuler la pensée à divers titres, est pris entre une contrainte étrange (la thématisation presque folklorique de la « technoscience » future) et une variabilité infinie tout autour de cette contrainte. Nous nous proposons d’analyser les arcanes de ce genre à la lumière de la notion, empruntée à A. Badiou, de « procédure de vérité », qui est un puissant modèle pour ce type de tensions productives. Conformément à cette lecture, qui suggère que la SF cache, en un sens, un mystérieux « cœur » procédural, nous proposons de modéliser une partie de ce noyau fuyant par la notion, empruntée à B. Stiegler, de « désajustement », notion qui caractérise le rapport périodiquement et systématiquement problématique du technique et du social. Nous élaborons ensuite deux constats. Premièrement, la guerre froide théorique entre la « philosophie analytique » (méthodologiquement centrée sur la logique mathématique) et la « philosophie continentale » (tout le reste de la philosophie mondiale contemporaine !) fait toujours rage de nos jours : notamment du fait de l’alliance « politique » de la logique et de l’informatique. Deuxièmement, le rêve (propre aux analytiques) de l’« intelligence artificielle » a vécu et les omniprésentes retombées technologiques de l’informatique (dont l’internet), qui sont censées jouer comme puissant argument de marketing pro-analytique, ne sont en fait qu’un triste et trompeur lot de consolation, cachant une agonie théorique désespérée qui se transforme en rage pratique méthodique. Partant de ces deux constats et en nous appuyant sur l’analyse de l’articulation « fantasme/perversion » proposée par J. Lacan et précisée par S. Žižek (comme symétrisation « a<>$ » du mathème « $<>a »), nous proposons de voir dans le genre SF, lu comme « désajustement onirisé », un prisme possible et puissant, révélateur d’une bataille théorique capitale de cette guerre froide philosophique. Dans cette bataille, peu visible sinon, qui tourne autour du statut théorique et politique du « rêve », il y va de l’autorité, du fantasme et de la perversion d’un « complexe logico-informatique » (tristement comparable au « complexe militaro-industriel »), ainsi que de son projet, tout aussi dangereux qu’insistant, d’effacer tout à fait du champ du pensable et de l’agir la notion mathématique et philosophique de « structure ».

To get a comprehensive understanding of the core concept of “the end of art”, this book analyses the intellectual trajectory of Arthur Danto, highlighting his successive achievements in philosophy of action, philosophy of history and philosophy of art. If, as Danto says, everything is extensively associated with everything else, it is impossible to avoid putting the philosophy of art in relation with his whole philosophical system.

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

Workshop presentation for "Mind the Gap: (In)famous Oppositions in the History of Philosophy", organised by the Dutch Research School of Philosophy & University of Utrecht.
Held at Nunspeet, 13 May 2017.

http://www.ozsw.nl/activity/mind-the-gap-infamous-oppositions-in-the-history-of-philosophy/

(Note: I have uploaded this here after the students at the workshop requested a copy. Apologies for any typos, and for incomplete citations.)

The present work is devoted to the exploration of some formal possibilities suggesting, since some years, the possibility to elaborate a new, whole geometry, relative to the concept of “opposition”. The latter concept is very important and vast (as for its possible applications), both for philosophy and science and it admits since more than two thousand years a standard logical theory, Aristotle’s “opposition theory”, whose culminating formal point is the so called “square of opposition”. In some sense, the whole present enterprise consists in discovering and ordering geometrically an infinite amount of “avatars” of this traditional square structure (also called “logical square” or “Aristotle’s square”). The results obtained here go even beyond the most optimistic previous expectations, for it turns out that such a geometry exists indeed and offers to science many new conceptual insights and formal tools. Its main algorithms are the notion of “logical bi-simplex of dimension m” (which allows “opposition” to become “n-opposition”) and, beyond it, the notions of “Aristotelian pq-semantics” and “Aristotelian pq-lattice” (which allow opposition to become p-valued and, more generally, much more fine-grained): the former is a game-theoretical device for generating “opposition kinds”, the latter gives the structure of the “opposition frameworks” containing and ordering the opposition kinds. With these formal means, the notion of opposition reaches a conceptual clarity never possible before. The naturalness of the theory seems to be maximal with respect to the object it deals with, making this geometry the new standard for dealing scientifically with opposition phenomena. One question, however, philosophical and epistemological, may seem embarrassing with it: this new, successful theory exhibits fundamental logical structures which are shown to be intrinsically geometrical: the theory, in fact, relies on notions like those of “simplex”, of “n-dimensional central symmetry” and the like. Now, despite some appearances (that is, the existence, from time to time, of logics using some minor spatial or geometrical features), this fact is rather revolutionary. It joins an ancient and still unresolved debate over the essence of mathematics and rationality, opposing, for instance, Plato’s foundation of philosophy and science through Euclidean geometry and Aristotle’s alternative foundation of philosophy and science through logic. The geometry of opposition shows, shockingly, that the logical square, the heart of Aristotle’s transcendental, anti-Platonic strategy is in fact a Platonic formal jungle, containing geometrical-logical hyper-polyhedra going into infinite. Moreover, this fact of discovering a lot of geometry inside the very heart of logic, is also linked to a contemporary, raging, important debate between the partisans of “logic-inspired philosophy” (for short, the analytic philosophers and the cognitive scientists) and those, mathematics-inspired, who begin to claim more and more that logic is intrinsically unable to formalise, alone, the concept of “concept” (the key ingredient of philosophy), which in fact requires rather geometry, for displaying its natural “conceptual spaces” (Gärdenfors). So, we put forward some philosophical reflections over the aforementioned debate and its deep relations with questions about the nature of concepts. As a general epistemological result, we claim that the geometrical theory of oppositions reveals, by contrast, the danger implicit in equating “formal structures” to “symbolic calculi” (i.e. non-geometrical logic), as does the paradigm of analytic philosophy. We propose instead to take newly in consideration, inspired by the geometry of logic, the alternative paradigm of “structuralism”, for in it the notion of “structure” is much more general (being not reduced to logic alone) and leaves room to formalisations systematically missed by the “pure partisans” of “pure logic”.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

présenté en vue de l'habilitation à diriger des recherches sous la direction de Jean-Luc Marion Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2009 Liminaire Ce mémoire de synthèse accompagne la présentation, en vue d'une habilitation à diriger des recherches, d'un long mémoire inédit de près de 500 pages, Au coeur de la raison. Philosophie linguistique et phénoménologie, qui constitue naturellement la pièce centrale de ce travail. Cet inédit est accompagné d'une sélection d'articles -en plus de ceux qui ont été recueillis en volume dans Il y a (2003). Compte tenu de l'ampleur matérielle de ce dossier -qui comprend également trois autres ouvrages : L'événement et le monde (1998), L'événement et le temps (1999), La chant de la vie. Phénoménologie de Faulkner (2005), et trois ouvrages collectifs dont j'ai assumé la direction ou co-direction : Le néant. Contribution à une histoire du non-être dans la philosophie occidentale (2006), Wittgenstein et la tradition phénoménologique (2008) et Heidegger en dialogue (1912)(1913)(1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918)(1919)(1920)(1921)(1922)(1923)(1924)(1925)(1926)(1927)(1928)(1929)(1930). Rencontres, affinités, confrontations (2009) -je m'en tiendrai dans cette brève présentation aux grandes lignes de mon travail depuis une vingtaine d'années. N'ayant ni prédisposition ni prédilection pour le bavardage -du moins je l'espère -il n'est sans doute pas utile d'alourdir encore une HDR plutôt volumineuse.

Essay for Borderless Philosophy, Vol. 5 on the theme of the analytic-continental division. 

SPECIAL TOPIC ISSUE:
“The End of Analytic Philosophy and/or Continental Philosophy, Yes or No? And If Yes, Then What’s Beyond?”

https://www.cckp.space/publications-cskp

New School for Social Research ♦ Department of Philosophy
Lecture invited for the NYC PSWIP 2nd Annual Colloquium
Great Men, Little Black Dresses, & The Virtues of Keeping One’s Feet on the Ground: On the Status of Women in Philosophy


Wednesday, April 8th 2009, 2-4 PM
New School for Social Research
Machinist Conference Room, Mezzanine
65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. 

The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound.

Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward.

Hobbes’s political philosophy starts from a number of premises that are supposed to be self-evident, supplemented by various observations from experience. These statements are examined critically and in their interrelatedness in order to find out to what extent Hobbes provides a convincing system of thought. The importance of the basis of man’s actions, his self-interest, is inquired, since it serves as the basis of his practical philosophy. After this, Hobbes’s views on ‘moral’ notions are expounded. As it turns out, Hobbes maintains a number of concepts that have such a connotation, but interprets these in a specific way. The article is concluded with a modest systematic reconstruction of Hobbes’s main thoughts in practical philosophy.

""
In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. Amidst this tangle one finds Bataille’s statement that an ‘abyss’ separates English from French and German philosophy, the first recorded announcement of the analytic-continental divide in the twentieth century.""

The Analytic Turn in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Western Philosophy, Philosophy, The Analytic Turn in Early Twentieth-Century, Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Russell, Frege, Wittgenstein, Bolzano, Husserl, The Varieties of Analysis, Semantic, Conceptual and Phenomenological Analysism, Connective and Explicatory Analysis, Decompositional and Transformative Analysis, Michael Beaney, Beaney Michael,
http://alhassanain.org/english/?com=book&id=833

L’inquadramento delle problematiche teoriche affrontate nella prima parte della produzione foucaultiana rispetto alla riflessione epistemologica, costituisce l’oggetto di questo lavoro.
Gli anni sessanta del secolo scorso vedono infatti il filosofo francese Michel Foucault impegnato in un lungo confronto critico con la storia e la filosofia delle scienze. La vocazione anti-illuministica che lo ispira, conduce la sua ricerca verso la produzione di opere che hanno avuto un
potente impatto sulla scena accademica della prima parte della seconda metà del XX secolo e che, ancora oggi, non cessano di stimolare nuove prospettive d’indagine. Il nucleo della trattazione che segue prende dunque in considerazione i lavori eseguiti nel corso di quella fase
della sua produzione che gran parte della letteratura è concorde nel definire periodo“archeologico”. Quest’ultimo si dispiega nel decennio compreso tra la pubblicazione di Storia della follia nell’età classica (1961) e quella de L’ordine del discorso (1971), il quale segna
il momento della svolta genealogica. Nei suoi caratteri generali, la ricerca svolta in quegli anni è inquadrabile come una storia critica della produzione discorsiva occidentale afferente uno specifico quanto problematico insieme di conoscenze - nonché come critica filosofica della narrazione storica dei processi di cristallizzazione di questi ultimi in discipline scientifiche. La trattazione si sviluppa dunque su due livelli. Il primo è teso alla ricognizione delle considerazioni teoriche e metodologiche rilevanti per il discorso epistemologico in generale. Con il secondo si procede alla disamina di una delle prove su campo di tale impalcatura teorico-metodologica – il caso di “Le parole e le cose. Un’archeologia delle scienze umane” (1966) - e della relazione che
il testo intrattiene con l’epistemologia delle scienze umane.

In addition to the long-standing divide between so-called 'analytic' and so-called 'continental' philosophy, philosophy is challenged in the political realm and concerns about public spending for philosophy increase. This is matched with a growing effort to popularize philosophy, bringing it into the public sphere. The effort to secure support for philosophy highlights the ambiguity of philosophical demarcation tactics, especially in a post-truth era which tends to underline science and technology education contra philosophy. But as with a concern for the history of science, philosophy's past may yet prove useful in the future. Looking at both hermeneutics and history, inviting more than the usual cast of favorite authors into our intellectual network, it may be possible to bring philosophy into more global and pluralist expressions.

The theoretical movements known as Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology depend on the “critique of correlationism” offered by the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux in his 2009 After Finitude. There Meillassoux claims to have shown that Kant and all philosophers following him committed a grave and unseen philosophical error that he calls “correlationism,” in failing to see that humans can have access to absolute knowledge. Meillassoux’s demonstration fails to deliver on this promise by equivocating on just the key argumentative points that philosophers from Kant onward have worked to clarify with precise language and argument, and by ignoring tremendous amounts of countervailing textual evidence. Far from blindly committing the correlationist “error,” much of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy takes the issues Meillasoux raises as central ones for any philosophical investigation, with a significant number of philosophers and theorists adopting the realist position Meillassoux claims has been eliminated.

Twentieth-century philosophy has often been pictured as divided into two camps, analytic and continental. This study challenges this depiction by examining encounters between some of the leading representatives of either side. Starting with Husserl and Frege's fin-de-siècle turn against psychologism, it turns to Carnap's 1931 attack on Heidegger's metaphysics (together with its background in the Cassirer-Heidegger dispute of 1929), moving on to Ayer's 1951 meeting with Bataille and Merleau-Ponty at a Parisian bar, followed by the 'dialogue of the deaf' between Oxford linguistic philosophers and phenomenologists at the 1951 Royaumont colloquium, leading up to the Derrida-Searle controversy. Careful study shows that it is implausible to assume the existence of a century-old 'gulf' between two sides of philosophy. Vrahimis argues that miscommunication and ignorance over the exact content of the above encounters must to a large extent be held accountable for any perceived gap.

Nihilism poses grave problems for those who seek directives to lead their lives. In this article, the three most important ways to deal with nihilism are inquired, with an emphasis on their credibility. Both nihilism from a metaphysical perspective and the emphasis on pleasure from nihilistic considerations are given attention. The acceptance of nihilism can have far-reaching consequences, which are evaluated at various points. Nietzsche’s approach must also be considered. He accepts what he calls a sort of nihilism, but as a means to ‘new’ values. This alternative to nihilism is examined no less critically than the other two stances.

Voraussetzung, Welt und Wissenschaft __________________________________________________________________________________________ ii Voraussetzung, Welt und Wissenschaft __________________________________________________________________________________________ v Voraussetzung, Welt und Wissenschaft __________________________________________________________________________________________ vi Ich bin auf dem Boden meiner Überzeugungen angelangt. Und von dieser Grundmauer könnte man beinahe sagen, sie werde vom ganzen Haus getragen. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Über Gewißheit Voraussetzung, Welt und Wissenschaft __________________________________________________________________________________________ vii 1. Vorwort Einsamkeit und Philosophie vertragen sind nicht. Jeder philosophische Gedanke ist Teil eines Netzes -eines historischen, eines kulturellen, eines argumentativen und eines sozialen Netzes. Ich möchte das Vorwort dieser Arbeit nutzen, um über das letzte dieser vier Netze

In 1911, Bergson visited Britain for a number of lectures which led to his increasing popularity. Russell personally encountered Bergson during his lecture at University College London on 28 October, and on 30 October Bergson attended one of Russell’s lectures. Russell went on to write a number of critical articles on Bergson, contributing to the hundreds of publications on Bergson which ensued following these lectures.
Russell’s critical writings have been seen as part of a history of controversies between so-called ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’ philosophers in the twentieth century. Yet Russell’s engagement with Bergson’s thought comes as a response to a particular British form of Bergsonism and is involved with the wider phenomenon of the British import of Bergsonism (by figures connected in different ways to Russell, such as Hulme, Wildon Carr or Eliot). Though this may challenge the view of Russell and Bergson as enacting an early version of the ‘Analytic’-‘Continental’ divide, there are however some particular characterisations of Bergson by Russell which contribute to the subsequent formation of the ‘rotten scene’ (Glendinning 2006: 69) of the divide in the second half of the twentieth century.

People might be transracial right now and not know it or they know it and have to hide it from a hostile social world. Some forms of intelligent artificial life might have precisely two or two thousand gender categories, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Possibilities of actual identities are constrained by the practicalities of a world and the philosophy of practicality in the main, is Pragmatism. Now, very few things are as impractical as possibilities of fictional differences yet funny enough, we can sense these things quite easily as they seem to necessarily depend on real objective distinctions. Both phenomenological and object-oriented interventions could provide needed corrections to some of the concerns generated by inconsistencies of synthesizing a pluralistic naturalism, ameliorative political fundamentalism or conceptual role inferentialism as determinative pragmatic methodologies. My dissertation interrogates the relationship between pragmatism and phenomenology from the standpoint of both fundamental and regional ontology. The target is to situate a more appropriate role for the natural sciences as well as the arts in relation to each respective sort of fundamental orientations. In the middle section, I undertake an extended discussion of the conceptual tensions involved in phenomenological and pragmatic theories of meaning and explicit or implicit ontologies. An object-oriented ontology is the key to my project as OOO theorizes that the scientific and creative potentials for objects and relations may be found in the respective agent-neutral and agent-relative powers and capacities of any ‘real’ object. I conclude with specific applications of Naturalistic Phenomenology and Neo-Pragmatism in projected future conceptions of race in futuristic semantic and social ontological contexts.

In der jüngeren Philosophiegeschichte hat die Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel immer wieder
unterschiedliche Phasen durchlaufen, wobei die jüngere, eher überraschende Rückkehr zu hegelschen
Gedanken im Lager der analytischen Philosophie sicher ein denkwürdiges Phänomen darstellt. Der
Aufsatz untersucht zunächst (2) eine der wichtigsten Russellschen anti-idealistischen Weichenstellungen
zu Beginn der analytischen Philosophie. Russells Abkehr von einer frühen ‚Platonisch-
Atomistischen‘ Sicht zum ‚Logischen Atomismus‘ wird skizziert, wobei seine in ‚On
Denoting‘ vorgestellten Theorie untersucht wird, derzufolge sich altes metaphysisches Denken durch die
Grammatik der Sprache zu Hypostasierung abstrakter grammatikalischer Satzsubjekte verführen lasse.
Dieser Fehler wird von Russell insbesondere auch Hegel zugeschrieben, und Hegels Idealismus damit als
‚logisch überholt‘ abgelehnt. Stattdessen habe die moderne Philosophie streng zwischen Begriffen mit
Referenz und sinnlosen Begriffen zu unterscheiden, wobei zunehmend empirische Verifikation und der
Bezug zur Sinnlichkeit zum Kriterium eines philosophischen Realismus wird. Sodann wird (3.1) die
schrittweise Abkehr der analytischen Philosophie von diesem verifikationistisch-empiristischen
Verständnis von Objektivität skizziert. Dabei wird im Überblick vor allem auf Quines, Davidsons und
Sellars Attacken gegen eine der Begrifflichkeit gegenüberstehenden ‚gegebenen
Objektivitat‘ eingegangen. Es erweist sich als unmöglich, eine Sinnlichkeit jenseits unserer begrifflichen
Durchdringen zu postulieren. Dadurch gerät jedoch die Idee eines empirischen Realismus überhaupt in
Gefahr. Somit wird (3.2.) McDowells Versuch skizziert, trotz jener Attacken gegen den Mythos des
Gegebenen, an einem minimalistischen Empirismus festzuhalten. Dazu wird vor allem McDowells
Rückgriff auf die hegelsche Idee der Unbegrentztheit des Begrifflichen als Lösungsvorschlag kritisch
rekonstruiert. Abschliessend wird (3.3.) kritisch eingewendet, dass McDowell mit seinen beiden
Begriffen der ‚zweiten Natur‘ und der ‚Unbegrenztheit des Begrifflichen‘ zwar die entscheidenen, einen
Realismus verunmöglichenden Dualismen der Gegenwart aufheben will, dass aber im Unterschied zu
Hegel eine tiefergehende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Skeptizismus ausdrücklich nicht angestrebt wird,
womit McDowells ‚anti-dualistischen‘ Gegenthesen leider uneingelöste und notwendig unausgeführte
Thesen bleiben.


Keywords: McDowell, Sellars, Davidson, Quine, Objektivität, Analytische Philosophie, Epistemologie,
Zweite Natur, Unbegrentztheit des Begrifflichen, Absoluter Idealismus, Naturalismus, Realismus.

J. L. Austin's claim that language ‘used not seriously’ is ‘parasitic’ upon ‘normal use’ has proved a puzzle to literary scholars, who have often taken this to mean that they are not allowed to apply the insights of speech-act theory to their own object of research. This article explores how, when read together, Michel Serres’ definition of the parasite as a ‘thermal exciter’ and Deleuze's concept of ‘minor literature’ bring out the hidden potential inherent in Austin's claim. More specifically, the article argues that Austin's reference to literature as a parasitic entity might become a promising conceptual gift, allowing us to generate a new model for approaching the world-shaping potential of literary texts.

This dissertation presents a comparative reading of Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with the intent of arguing that the analytic/continental divide in philosophy is a spurious one of no real benefit to the enterprise of philosophy as long as it remains so pronounced and important philosophers of either side are neglected in their opposite tradition. It shows that these two philosophers, undeniably held up as important and influential in their respective traditions, can not only be meaningfully compared but actually display similar motives, projects, arguments and methods, and when read together productively illuminate each other’s work. This I think can be done not just with these two philosopher’s bodies of work, but with many others either side of the divide. The divide then, does not mean very much, merely denoting a difference in focus and method. My main comparative point I will make in arguing this is that both Heidegger and Wittgenstein use a negative concept (nothing and nonsense, respectively) as part of a project of initiating an overcoming of metaphysics. Heidegger questions nothingness in order to get to the heart of what metaphysics is and having done so informs us that even questioning the nature of metaphysics questions beyond metaphysics. Metaphysics is engaged with and put on display as something to be overcome. Something similar, I argue, happens in Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein engages with previous ways of doing philosophy (and thus metaphysics), putting them on display before informing us that they are in fact nonsense. What he actually sees as nonsense is engaged with, reproduced and declared as something to be overcome. Other points are made along the way, such as that Wittgenstein’s thought is more continuous than was originally supposed and that the early Wittgenstein can be just as meaningfully compared with Heidegger as the later Wittgenstein has been, but our main point of comparison will be on negative concepts used as parts of projects that engage with metaphysics in order that it can be overcome. This is more than a superficial similarity in method and project, so if the divide really does denote something significant, it does not seem to in this area.

This paper assesses the commonalities between Wittgenstein and Marx from a political perspective. In philosophy, it is argued, they dovetail when it comes to criticing an "empty" and hence ideological use of languages, particularly when describing the modern society. Both of them aim to transcend philosophy and its "mysterious" use of language, aiming to get closer to the "real" human practices. However, the practices they had in mind - beyond their philosophies - also designate a difference between them: Wittgenstein's focus on the uses of language are rather narrow, compared to Marx's analysis of productive activities in general. However, even here we can see that Marx still uses a criticism of language in his critique of political economy.

This introduction to a translated part of Heidegger's article "The Concept of Time" (1924)  touches upon his confrontation with physics over the topic of time, his phenomenology of the pro-ject vs. Husserl's phenomenology of the sub-ject, his early idea of philosophy as pre-theoretical science,  and his understanding of event vs. process in his KNS course of 1919.